Latvia’s National Library lives in one of Riga’s most spectacular buildings, whose architect drew inspiration from Latvian mythology about a Castle of Light and a Glass Mountain.
The Castle of Light opened in 2014, the year Riga served as Europe’s Capital of Culture; just before the opening, thousands of people formed a human chain to move books hand-to-hand from older buildings across the river and into the new building.
Photo: Edgars Kalmens/tautasgramatuplaukts
The library’s building was designed a few years earlier by Gunnar Birkerts, a Latvian-born architect working in the U.S. The building is as spectacular inside as it is outside, with open atria, hanging stairways, comfortable reading spaces and the amazing People’s Bookshelf.
The People’s Bookshelf is a collection of over 15,000 books, and growing. Each one was contributed by an individual, some famous and some not, and each includes a personal statement of why the book is important to the contributor. And yes, the books circulate!
In addition to books and a large audio-visual area, the library includes workspaces for study, crafts and more as well as spaces for conferences and meetings. There’s even a section devoted to the Americas.
While the building, just across the river from the Latvian capital’s historic core, is grounded in mythology for its design, the library within has a more historical footing, closely connected with the country’s independence.
Latvia is a relatively new nation; before 1918 the lands that are now Latvia were handed back and forth over the centuries between tribal chiefs, German nobles, Swedish kings, Russian Tsars and more; its population was split between Latvian-speaking farmers and common folk and German-speaking merchants, traders and artisans.
Activities and exhibits for young people
As in many parts of Europe, a new nationalism developed in the 19th century, and when opportunity arose at the end of World War I, Latvia declared itself independent and a republic—and established the library as the State Library, which took on the task of creating a national bibliography, an index of nearly everything written about Latvia or in Latvian.
The first chief librarian, Janis Misnis, started the collection by donating his immense personal library. A law required publishers to give the library a copy of everything they published, and within a year, the library had 250,000 volumes and had to be stored in several buildings.
Special seating: Gunnar Birkets designed this one-off Papal throne for the visit of John Paul II to Detroit in 1987
One of history’s big jolts rapidly expanded its collections at the beginning of World War II: under an agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union, most of the Baltic Germans were moved, willing or not, into Germany and into conquered parts of Poland, leaving behind both personal libraries and the large library of its historical society. By late 1940, the library was up to 1.7 million volumes stored in two old-town buildings.
Over the next fifty years, while political and social change swirled everywhere, the biggest changes for the library for the library were its renaming by Germany as the County Library, removing references to Latvia, and then to State Library of the Latvian SSR when Latvia became part of the Soviet Union after World War II. Each new regime, however, removed volumes it considered ‘dangerous’ from the open shelves.
By the time Latvia became independent again in 1991, the library was up to 5 million volumes and was bursting out of even its new Soviet-era building. Independence meant a new name again: National Library of Latvia, and a plan for a new building to highlight a new beginning, although it took over twenty years to come to fruition. Well worth the wait!
